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Industry news and practical guides covering precision optics, optical communications, fiber connectivity, optical transceivers and emerging imaging products.
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Industry News
Creotech Quantum will design, build and demonstrate superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors for ground quantum-key-distribution stations and advanced laser communication under a 24-month ESA project worth €2.33 million, lifting the detector technology to TRL 5 and moving it from proof-of-concept prototype toward deployable hardware.
Read article →Artemis has merged Omega Optical — precision optical coatings — into Optikos, arguing that splitting design, fabrication, coating and testing across separate organisations has become a constraint rather than an asset. Growth capital is committed to manufacturing capacity, and infrared optics now sits inside the same workflow as thin-film coatings and metrology.
Read article →InfraTec’s new ImageIR c7300 opens the compact line of cooled infrared cameras with an MWIR long-life cooler rated at 28,000 hours average service life, a five-position filter wheel, a standard range of −10…1,500 °C extendable to 3,000 °C, and on-camera calibration data for plug-and-play integration.
Read article →Defence — drones, counter-UAS, border surveillance — is now the engine of infrared demand, while automotive slips to the right. The sourcing decision that follows is narrow: Chinese vendors are pushing 8 µm pixel pitch, Western vendors are holding 12 µm, and infrared optics are migrating from germanium to moulded chalcogenide glass.
Read article →Since 1 July 2026 every low-value parcel entering the EU carries a flat €3 duty below the €150 threshold, and 5.8 billion low-value parcels arrived in 2025, up 26%. Mainstream pet food is insulated; lightweight treats, supplements and accessories shipped direct to consumers are not.
Read article →Atlas’ new hand drops the pinky and packs 13 degrees of freedom into four fingers, with a four-DOF opposable thumb, dense fingertip and palm tactile arrays, and one encapsulated actuator type with no cables crossing the joints. Dexterous tool use is now the design target.
Read article →Huawei’s Ruiying Z10 pairs a 1-inch sensor with a 9.1–91 mm f/2.0–4.5 motorised zoom and a φ20.22 mm entry pupil at the long end — larger than a Sony RX100 VI, a Panasonic ZS110 or vivo’s 200 mm teleconverter. Detachable optics are back, and the optical bill of materials changes with them.
Read article →MIIT has written 1 million 50G-PON ports by 2030 into the 15th Five-Year Plan, against 20,000 in 2025 — a fifty-fold build. Standards are complete and the chips and modules are called mature. Cost, power and coupling yield are what stand between the plan and volume.
Read article →SiC waveguides carry a 2.6–2.7 refractive index and 50°–70° field of view in a single layer. With 12-inch DUV lines in production, AR waveguide supply is shifting from glass to silicon carbide.
Read article →Global humanoid robot shipments reached nearly 25,000 units in the first half of 2026, up 432% year on year, with China above 75%. The parts list behind each unit is where the sourcing opportunity sits.
Read article →Array glass molding has taken C-Lens collimators from process validation to ten-million-units-a-month output, with head-module customers already placing volume orders. Collimator sourcing is being re-rated.
Read article →AT&T has committed more than US$3 billion to Corning for fiber and cable through 2030, on top of a record China Mobile tender where 17 of 18 bidders hit the ceiling price. Cable pricing and lead times are the story.
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